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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24921265">[Be]Longing</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin'>kaeorin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Loki's Lullabies [92]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers Tower, Gen, Hidden Depths, Pre-Relationship, Protective Loki (Marvel), Reader-Insert, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Self-Worth Issues, Stark Tower</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 05:08:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,064</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24921265</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn’t easy, being the only regular person living in Stark Tower, but was it worth it?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Loki (Marvel)/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Loki's Lullabies [92]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>268</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>[Be]Longing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It could be hard, being the only <i>nobody</i> living in Stark Tower, but it was <i>especially</i> hard on days like today. From the moment you first opened your eyes, everything started going wrong. Your phone had fallen off of your bed and, when you picked it up off of the ground, the screen was cracked. You smashed your toe against your bathroom doorway. You ran out of hot water halfway through your shower, before you could rinse the conditioner out of your hair. You were running late, so you threw a couple of slices of bread into the toaster, only to discover that you’d already finished your jam so you could only butter it. On your way out the door, you’d dropped one of the slices and it landed, of course, butter-side-down on the floor. After you cleaned up that mess and threw the toast away, you were running late and had to sprint in hope of catching your train. You missed it. While eating your breakfast, you bit your cheek, hard, and then, a few minutes later, you bit it again in the very same spot.</p><p>Things only got worse when you got to school. You hated that you were back in college at <i>your</i> age, but it was the only way you could think of to try to do anything useful with your life. You made it to all of your classes just fine, but you were already so messed-up from the morning that you just knew your notes were garbage. Nothing stuck in your head. It felt a lot like everyone around you was speaking an entirely different language. When you tried to grab something from a little cafe for lunch, your card was declined. The cashier must have seen the way your face fell, because she took pity on you and told you to just take it and go, but you couldn’t eat it without feeling intense guilt. And shame. And then you bit your cheek again.</p><p>By the time you finally headed back to catch the train home, you felt absolutely deflated. Sometime early that evening, you’d stopped feeling much of anything in response to the shit that kept happening to you. You started accepting it with a shrug and a sigh. If you’d been a little more full of yourself, you might have felt like the world was trying to grind you down into nothing, but you already knew that you were nothing. </p><p>You did catch your train home the first time, though, and you allowed yourself to smile just a little bit at the tiny win, until you accidentally made eye contact with a man across the car. He must have interpreted your ragged smile as interest, because he made his way over to you and kept trying to strike up a conversation. It wasn’t like you expected anyone to do anything about it—you knew as well as everyone else that the primary rule on public transportation was to keep your eyes down and your mind on your destination—but your eyes burned as you studied the ground. When the train pulled into your station, you hesitated for a moment. Would he follow you? Was the universe actually trying to kill you today? </p><p>With your heart in your throat, you forced yourself to melt into the crowd and when you made it to the streets above, you cast a quick look over your shoulder. The man was nowhere to be seen. You wanted to smile, but kept your face frozen just in case smiling made things worse, and hurried into the Tower. You were so close. If you could just keep your head down a little while longer, just until you made it to your own room, you could lock yourself away and try to forget that you existed for a while.</p><p>So, naturally, you ran straight into Tony. You hadn’t noticed him at first, which was appropriately stupid, given what a big personality he had. He grasped your shoulders to keep you from knocking him to the floor and then beamed at you. “Kid! I’m glad you’re here. You remember the whole thing with the propulsion engine, right? How it kept jamming and backfiring? I figured it out.” </p><p>He drew in a breath like he was going to launch into a long-winded explanation of exactly how he’d been brilliant, but you shrugged him off and looked away. “I’m glad, but not right now, okay? I’ve got a lot of work to do.” You didn’t wait for his response before turning away and trying not to all-out run for your room. Sometimes Tony humored you by letting you work alongside him in his lab, but if today wasn’t proof enough that you were too fucking stupid to be here, you didn’t know what was. You liked talking shop with him, and you loved listening to him explain how he’d solved some big unsolvable problem, but tonight you felt too raw. </p><p>Thankfully, you did make it to your room without any further incidents. Small miracles. You locked the door securely behind you, let your bag drop to the floor (belatedly remembering that it held your laptop, which of course was now probably cracked at a minimum), and dropped bonelessly into your bed. You didn’t bother to turn on the lights. You didn’t bother to take off your shoes or change into something more comfortable. No, right now you just sort of wanted to stop existing. You were taking up space and resources here in the Tower that could have been put to better use for someone else. There were probably thousands of people out there who could be more useful in the lab <i>and</i> train harder in the gym. Somewhere out there, maybe even in the city itself, there was someone who held the cure for cancer in their brain, but, because you took their spot in Stark’s scholarship program for grown-up adults who maybe had no business going back to school in the first place, it would never come to fruition for them.</p><p>Maybe you let yourself cry. What harm did it do? You were locked away behind closed doors, in a dark room, hidden under your blankets like a child, and no one was going to hear you. Your brain was just aware enough of reality so that it could taunt you with it. Tony picked you for the program for a reason. He let you live here for a reason. Just because you were too stupid to recognize your insane privilege here didn’t mean that it was okay to ignore it. You cried until your chest hurt. Your throat felt ragged even though you’d made <i>damn</i> sure that you weren’t screaming. Imagine Earth’s Mightiest Heroes overhearing your stupid human weakness and looking at each other awkwardly, trying to decide whether they were supposed to come comfort you. You couldn’t bear the thought of looking at any of them today. FRIDAY told you that Steve had made dinner and that they were asking after you, but you lifted your head just long enough to ask her to tell them that you were tired. If you said you were sick, they might feel like they had to worry. </p><p>Even after your tears had run out, you just laid there for a while. If there was any shred of pity left in the world, you might have slipped into the release of sleep, but there wasn’t. So you didn’t. There was a nagging voice in the back of your mind that told you it was stupid to lie here and wallow in your mediocrity, but even that just felt like it weighed you down, pressed you to the mattress. Of course it was stupid. That’s why you were doing it.</p><p>At one point that night, maybe after dinner, Clint knocked on your door and called out to you through the wood. He said he just wanted to check in and make sure you were okay. He didn’t need to do that. You pressed your fists to your mouth and held your breath. He hesitated for a little while—you pictured him shifting his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other, straining his ears to listen for your response—but then you practically heard him let out a sigh of relief and walk away. Good. He didn’t need to worry about you. None of them did. They had so many other things to worry about, more important things.</p><p>A little while later, someone else knocked on your door with a heavy fist. It made you flinch, until you heard Thor’s cheerful voice ring out behind the door. No one was trying to break in; Thor was just...exuberant. He sang out your name in a way that made you want to shrink down even further and told you to come join him for a movie. That almost made you laugh out loud. Sure, the Avengers had plenty of room to kick back and just chill out for a bit with some kind of mindless television, but how could you let yourself do that when you had so much further to go? You’d already wasted an entire evening crying by yourself instead of studying or getting anything useful done. Thinking about going downstairs and sitting with <i>Thor the Asgardian Prince</i> when everyone else in the room knew that you’d done nothing to belong there actually made you feel sick to your stomach. You kept your mouth shut. Thor waited a little longer than Clint had, but he, too, eventually went away.</p><p>You dragged yourself out of bed and then over to your bag. You held your breath as you pulled out your computer and opened it, but, using up every last scrap of luck you’d ever have for the rest of your life, the screen was fine and the computer booted up with no problems. You sat on the floor for a while, face lit up only by your computer screen, and tried to lose yourself in your work. You weren’t doing anything that was going to save the world, but slogging through task after task on your endless to-do list gave you the illusion of getting something done. </p><p>Only when the dull ache behind your eyes became something sharper did you let yourself take a break. It was late. Very late, almost early. It’d been hours since you’d eaten anything, and almost a full day since you’d eaten anything <i>substantial</i>. You were behaving a little like Tony, forcing your body to run on fumes, and you weren’t even doing anything half as valuable as he did. Your self-loathing continued to snicker in the back of your mind, accused you of being stupid and weak for even considering taking a break right now, but your head was killing you. Maybe you had to.</p><p>You cracked your door open just a bit at first, just enough to listen for any signs of life anywhere. Pretty much everyone else should have been sleeping. They were all strong and practically inhuman, so they didn’t require nearly as much sleep as your dull self did, but they were probably sleeping anyway. Still, you crept down to the kitchen as quietly as you could. You opened the fridge, and saw an actual plate of food there, honest-to-god covered with aluminum foil. There was a little scrap of paper on top—your name, written in Wanda’s careful handwriting. Something inside you slammed shut at the sight of it, and you closed the fridge. You hated that they felt they had to do something like that. Wouldn’t things be so much easier for them if they just forgot about you when you weren’t around? You opened the freezer and dug around until you found what you were looking for: a prepackaged burrito. It was old, and likely freezer-burnt, but that felt right to you. You got down a plate and dropped the burrito onto it, and then put it in the microwave.</p><p>While you waited for the microwave to finish, you leaned forward against the counter. Something told you that you should be paying more attention to your surroundings, but you were just too empty for that. Let every horror-movie demon creep up behind you if they wanted. So what?</p><p>Even with all those thoughts in your head, you still flinched when you felt someone touch your back. You yanked yourself away and made a noise like a strangled yelp before you could regain control over your body. Shame flooded you, igniting a fire in your cheeks. There were no demons here, only superheroes. And one of them had just made you scream like a baby. “I’m sorry,” you said almost without thinking about it.</p><p>“It’s been some time since anyone’s reacted to me like that.” His voice was low, but sort of amused. You recognized it immediately, of course. It was Loki. You couldn’t make yourself look at him, but something in the sound of his voice told you that he’d probably be looking at you with something like concern in his eyes. Loki did not much concern himself with the well-being of the people in the Tower, but you spent a lot of time with him on your good days. He was another Asgardian prince, of course, and sometimes you felt like that should make you just as uncomfortable as Thor or even Tony did, but his presence was a little more calming. He didn’t try to pretend that you were on the same level. You already knew that you’d never measure up to him, and that he’d never be impressed with anything that a mortal could do, so it kind of took some of the pressure off of you? Sometimes you could make him laugh, though, and that felt good.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” you mumbled again. Chalk another one up to your sluggish human senses. </p><p>“Are you well? You weren’t at dinner, and then Thor couldn’t drag you to his movie night.” The microwave dinged, thankfully giving you an excuse to turn away from him so you could take your crappy burrito out. You told yourself that Loki did <i>not</i> sound impressed that you’d managed to withstand Thor’s persuasion. Maybe he didn’t realize that Thor only stood outside your door for a while.</p><p>“I’m fine. Just...I have a lot of work to do.” You poked at the tortilla shell, and a little glop of beans oozed out and clung to your finger like napalm. It burned. You hissed and stuck your finger in your mouth without thinking about it.  “Gotta make sure I earn my keep, you know?”</p><p>Loki eyed your choice of dinner, but didn’t say a word about it. Dumb humans ate reheated garbage; what did he expect? He lifted his eyes to your face, and you had to force yourself to hold his gaze. “From what I hear, you’ve already earned your keep. Aren’t you the one who created Stark’s newest suit?”</p><p>“No.” You answered with certainty. At the most, you’d <i>helped</i> Tony redesign one of his power sources and then maybe asked a question that led him to create better weapons and defense systems. But he was the one who actually did everything. </p><p>He remained skeptical but, at least, did not press the issue. You felt your stomach rumble, and prayed to any god who might possibly have been listening that Loki couldn’t hear it. Feeling a little awkward, you forced yourself to take a bite. Yep. Freezer-burnt. But it would do. </p><p>“Well. I <i>know</i> you’re the one who created the device Stark gave me. The one that makes my illusions solid.” He almost had a point there. That one had been your idea, but only because you’d had a rather...inappropriate dream about what Loki could do with his illusions if only they could touch you...or...other things. You ignored the fresh heat burning in your cheeks and swallowed, hard.</p><p>“I designed it. Tony built it. <i>He</i> made it real.” This wasn’t really what you wanted to be doing right now, putting up this transparent fight as Loki did his best to remind you of the work you did. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. These people were heroes and you were just a wannabe lab rat. You wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to stay here, but you knew that there was no real way to say that without making him feel like he did.</p><p>“It may have saved my life, you know.” Okay, no. You didn’t know that. He didn’t sound like he was lying, but then again, he was Loki. If he <i>was</i> lying, would you be able to tell? “When I was with Thor and Romanoff in Bucharest. <i>Your</i> device got us into the base before they could realize I was there, and when they did, it deflected their weapons. They shot themselves with their own bullets. We didn’t have to lift a finger.”</p><p>You did allow yourself one tiny, private smile. Maybe you were a little vindictive, so you’d specified that the device should send high-speed projectiles back at almost exactly the same angle they’d been fired. If someone shot at Loki, maybe you wanted them kind of dead. You took another bite of your burrito and kept your gaze on the counter in front of you. “Good.”</p><p>He was quiet for another moment or two. Maybe your response had surprised him, but what else were you supposed to say? Of course you’d done your best to design something that would keep him safe. That was your job. Maybe that was the only way you could possibly convince yourself that you could ever halfway belong here. You weren’t hungry anymore, but your head was still throbbing in a way that told you you’d better finish eating anyway.</p><p>“You are so much more than you think you are. Can’t you see that?” And now it felt like it was time to go. The absolute last thing you wanted to do was make these people feel like they had to reassure you all the time. They had other things to do. Bigger things to do. You picked up your plate with the half-eaten burrito and tried to turn away from him, but he grabbed your wrist before you could bid him good night. “Don’t walk away from me. <i>I</i> know what it feels like to be on the outside. But you keep yourself there on your own. If you’d just accept your own brilliance, even for a moment, you could be so much happier.”</p><p>You snorted. He said it like it was so easy. “That’s not really how I work. It’s fine.” You tried to jerk your arm away from him, but his grip was like iron. </p><p>Instead of releasing you, he pulled you back towards him, spinning you around in the process, and then backed you up until you were pressing against the counter. You’d never been this close to him. His eyes were fierce, sharp, and bored into your own like he was trying to read your thoughts. He let go of you only so that he could grip the counter on either side of you and leaned in still closer.</p><p>“You’re making yourself sick. You think I can’t tell?” He sounded angry now, but not in such a way as to make you fearful of him. “You can’t go on like this. If you keep slapping away every hand that someone reaches out to you, you’re going to fall. They just want to help you, can’t you see that?”</p><p>You cursed the way your eyes began to sting, cursed the tears that welled up in them now that Loki was close enough to see them. You wanted to get out of here, but he was nearly wrapped around you, caging you in. Fuck him for pulling this tonight, and fuck you for relishing his closeness. You tried to swallow down the lump in your throat and put your hands on his chest like you had any hope of pushing him away. “They shouldn’t.” It wasn’t what you wanted to say, but...it was what you’d said. He did draw back, almost imperceptibly, but then surged forward again. He was too close.</p><p>“Well, they do. And why not? If they can accept a man who was once their enemy, why shouldn’t they accept a woman with a mind like yours?” He was practically whispering in your ear. “You are brilliant, darling. I wish you could see that.”</p><p>You could see at least some of what he was saying. Loki was a member of the team now. You heard about how awkward it had been at first, how uneasy things had been, but lately you’d also seen how they’d come around. How many times now had he come from nowhere and pulled the others back from the brink of defeat? Being underestimated was like his specialty, and he’d come to embrace it. But that hardly meant anything for you. You didn’t have his magic, you didn’t have his strength, and you certainly didn’t have his charisma. </p><p>But, rather than dragging all of this out any longer, you stopped fighting him and put your arms around him instead. He was clearly caught off-guard—he straightened a bit, and froze. He pressed one hand to the back of your head to allow you to hide your face against him, and held you tight with the other. You felt your sobs wrack through you, but you couldn’t do anything to stop them, and instead fumbled with your words to try to explain yourself. Between apologies and ragged pleas for forgiveness, you just kept repeating “I hate this. <i>I hate this</i>.” Maybe you didn’t even really know what “this” was. Your place here, deserved or not. This tantrum, and how it’d sprung from nowhere. Your mind, and the way it tormented you. You kept waiting for Loki to figure out how to extricate himself from your grip, but he didn’t bother. He just held you tightly and murmured soothing words into the top of your head, and let you fall apart there in his arms.</p><p>When it was finally all over, you still didn’t quite want to pull away from him. If you could keep your face hidden in his chest, maybe you could just keep pretending that you hadn’t absolutely lost your entire mind there in the dark, with no one around but Loki of Asgard and a frozen burrito. </p><p>But he wasn’t one to let you do something like that. He tightened his arms around you and, maybe you were hallucinating, but you felt like maybe he pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “There, now. Feel any better?”</p><p>No. Maybe. You shrugged, and then felt, more than heard, the way he laughed at you. He loosened his grip at last, but just enough to tell you that he’d let you pull away, if you wanted. You weren’t sure you did. You drew in a breath to apologize to him again, but he shushed you before you could even find the words.</p><p>“Take a break. Please. Come and sit with me.” His hands found your cheeks, then, and he raised your face to make you look at him. He looked...earnest. “Talk to me. Just for a little while.”</p><p>The weight of your unfinished work still weighed heavily upon you. There was still so much you needed to do if you ever wanted to be able to prove to yourself that you could belong here. A reluctant refusal even sprang to the tip of your tongue, but his face softened even further and he brushed his thumbs along your cheekbones and you heard yourself agree with him.</p><p>This was the absolute last thing that you’d been expecting when you first moved into the Tower. But you allowed Loki to pull you into the sitting room, and then folded yourself against him on one of the couches. He put his arm around your shoulders like he did it all the time, or like he couldn’t bear to be separated from you. He laced the fingers of his free hand through yours studied your fingers as he spoke to you. That hard, knotted weight in your chest began to loosen.</p><p>Maybe <i>this</i> felt like a place where you could belong.</p>
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